September 23, 1897
RENDER to Cesar the things that are Cesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.—Mark 12:17.
IT is not more legislation that the people need, but more religion.
WE would not discount law; we want good laws, and we must have them; but we want also something to make such laws effective.
LAW is the instrument and public sentiment the power which makes it effective. There can be no good government without a good public sentiment; and public sentiment cannot be created by legislation.
THERE is but one genuine “sure cure” in the earth to-day, and that is the grace of God. The richest man has not money enough to buy it, and the poorest has not poverty enough to shut him from it.
THERE are a great many people in this country who seem to be not yet convinced that two wrongs do not make right. A lynching, for example, is an effort to set one wrong right by perpetrating another.
THE “sabbath laws” of the States are as numerous and as well enforced now as they were fifty years ago; yet they have not prevented the incoming of a flood of moral degeneracy since that day.
“THE powers that be are ordained of God;” but this fact does not set the fiat of civil government above the commandment of Jehovah.
NO MAN or assembly of men have the power to manufacture right, or to absolve any individual from the obligation to obey the dictates of conscience.
THE weekly Sabbath is a holy day, because God made it holy, and it is impossible to change this fact. And being a holy day, its character cannot be other than religious. Any other kind of weekly sabbath is a counterfeit.
THE Sabbath is God’s, but he forces no man to keep it. Why should men go further than God and try to force people to render to God the tribute of Sabbath observance.